Laundry Detergent

During our Ladies' Retreat in March, we had a few "FYI" sessions where some of the ladies taught us how to do different things.  One of the sessions was on how to make your own laundry detergent.  At the end, we were told that in doing so, we would be spending only a penny per load of laundry that we did!  With a baby coming, which means more laundry, I thought that it was something I should look into doing!  I printed the recipe off from online, and bought all of the ingredients the next time we went grocery shopping.  The night that I made my first batch of it, I was very determined to take pictures of it.  It was then that I remembered that my camera was at the church!  I had to take the pictures with our phone.  That, combined with the fact that I am not that great at taking pictures, produced the pictures that you will see.  I am sorry that they are not the greatest pictures.

 Here are the ingredients:

1/2 cup of Borax (I bought 20 Mule Team Brand)

1/2 cup of Washing Soda ( I used Arm & Hammer)

1/2 cup of Baking Soda (You can use more or less depending on how fresh you want your clothes...I also used Arm & Hammer for this)

1/3 bar of Fels-Naptha soap

The first step is to grate the soap into a pot.  It was kind of funny because it did look like cheese, but by the smell you can tell it is not:)!

This is what the soap looked like after it was grated...it also smelt very good.

You then put in 6 cups of water and heat it until the soap has all completely melted.  You of course need to make sure that you are stirring it.

Then add the borax, washing soda, and baking soda, and stir it until it is all dissolved.

Put 4 cups of hot water into a bucket, and then put the soap mixture in and mix it up.  You will then add 1 gallon plus 6 cups of water and you are done!!!!! 

I doubled the recipe, so it made about 4 gallons of detergent for me...I bought this 5 gallon bucket at Wal-Mart since I did not have one large enough.  I was a little nervous about this whole endeavour, but it actually turned out to not be very hard, and I am very glad to be saving us some money.  One more thing about this detergent that is nice is that you do not have to use dryer sheets if you wash clothes, so that is another way that we area saving money.  One last note--you use 1/2 cup per load.

**Make sure you continue down and read the next post...Tyler and I both happened to have time today to write one, and I do not want you to miss his since it has been a while since he wrote!